Ohioans next year could confront a full crop of statewide ballot issues, ranging from medical marijuana to union-busting. The Election Day mechanisms are called the “initiative” and “referendum” — $5 words for the power of voters:

• To propose (“initiate”) an Ohio constitutional amendment by voter petition, and submit such amendments directly to all voters for approval or rejection.

• To propose (“initiate”) an Ohio law by voter petition to the General Assembly, then, if legislators don’t pass it, to ask all voters to pass it.

• To demand, by voter petition, review by all voters of a law the General Assembly itself has written (the “referendum”).

So, for instance, Ohioans next year may be asked to pass an “initiated” law to expand Medicaid in Ohio if the legislature doesn’t pass such a measure.

Ohioans meanwhile may be asked to ratify “initiated” constitutional amendments to authorize medical use of marijuana; in an anti-abortion move, to legally apply the word “person” to human beings “at every stage of … biological development … including fertilization”; to require Ohio to sell “Clean Energy” bonds to help promote environmentally friendly energy production; to permit same-sex marriage; or to ratify a union-busting Right to Work (for Less) proposal.

Ohioans also may be asked to second-guess General Assembly passage last May of Substitute House Bill 7, which would effectively shut down so-called Internet or sweepstakes cafes in Ohio. The cafes claim they don’t offer gambling — but also claim they’re considered competitors, and thus Statehouse targets, of Ohio’s four voter-authorized gambling casinos.

The state’s voters added the initiative and referendum to the Ohio Constitution in September 1912, among a slew of other amendments proposed by a 1912 convention. The “I&R” aims to bypass the General Assembly when special interests or legislative cowardice — sound familiar? — block measure voters want passed. The I&R is sometimes called the “Oregon system.” That state, a century ago, was considered a national model for so-called direct democracy.

In Oregon, according to Richard L. Neuberger, a great Oregon journalist and later a U.S. senator, “the power to govern was taken from the state capitol [in Salem] and put in the marketplace and on the hillside.” By the 1930s, though, Neuberger found that “a distressingly large number of … [initiated] proposals… have been started by groups that want to put money in their own wallets.” The supreme Ohio example: A 2009 initiative, bankrolled by Penn National Gaming and Cavs owner Dan Gilbert, that gave them Ohio casino monopolies, with casinos in Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati and Toledo.

One irony of the 1912 Ohio I&R amendment is that some convention delegates who backed it hoped to use the initiative to later pass the so-called Single Tax in Ohio. The Single Tax, in the words of its father, Henry George, would “abolish all taxes save one single tax levied on the value of land.”

That, to Ohio conservatives, was a red flag (in both senses); no way did they want voters to initiate a Single Tax law. So even now, though few Ohioans may know what the Single Tax is, their constitution still forbids using the initiative “to pass a law authorizing … the levy of any single tax on land.” You can rest easy, landlords.

Today, anyone who knows of California’s countless problems also knows that the (once) Golden State’s headaches are worsened by the slew of ballot issues that confronts California voters every election. Even so, California, Here I Come, seems to be the background music playing at Ohio’s Statehouse, plagued with a lazy legislature — and a mob of fee-hungry campaign consultants.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University.